The many independent music scenes in the twin cities are on fire. It’s reaching a point where it’s feeling like a statistical probability that something will break out and become huge. Maybe not lizzo level breakout, but the next big act out of the twin cities is for sure already playing local gigs. The coolest/most encouraging thing about this newer crop is there seems to be waaaay more scene/genre cross-pollination going on. Everybody is jamming with everybody. Here’s just the latest of many drops in many genres that really made me pause and say wow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov3lE_ZNPL0&list=OLAK5uy_mZM03jIndOmZDI48Cc4DnGPTSGaXWlWw0

Who’s it gonna be, jaefontane or somebody from the water wave crew? Soulflower or Marvelous from the cherry pit crew? biggkiaa or somebody already getting people hype at at creative_mpls and the entry? Some music school kids or rockers like the dregs playing creator’s cup? Some bedroom pop artist like sun.bear? Some intellephunk or mplshouse DJ/producer? It’s anybody’s game.

Yo the saaaaaax in this. Rafa is amazing! https://youtube.com/shorts/MLu0tRdu4hk

I’ve never seen this hooktheory site before but wow some of the chord charts for Nakata stuff are the best I’ve seen. Woulda been actually so helpful learning some of this stuff. Kind of hit or miss but the good stuff is really good when you hit the just piano button https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/capsule/hello spice has some whiffed chords and needs the post-chorus! https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/perfume/spice spotless https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/capsule/plastic-girl tilts me when stuff is wrong though, like Kamaitachi is missing the chords that make the whole song interesting (should be in the second time thorugh the chorus progression) https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/kyary-pamyu-pamyu/kamaitachi whereas Mondai Girl nails the the peculiar chords in the pre-chorus https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/kyary-pamyu-pamyu/mondai-girl go go fine day in piano is fun https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/capsule/go-go-fine-day

Also fascinating are the charts analyzing the complexity of the composition. They consistently show simple as heck melodies on top of off-the-charts complex chords. It’s data validating what I’ve found so fun for years

Example from https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/capsule/rgb

A chart showing rgb by Capsule having low melody complexity and high chord complexity

when ur mom is the coolest mom

message from my mom saying I was just wondering when skrylyx (sp?) is coming on

Looked up Porter’s live guitarist from Coachella and yeah… this is how you get the gig. Such a creative cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QpaAiBCj4

I’ve had One Wayne G on all day while working and it’s incredible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loQolUfkyvo&list=OLAK5uy_km-PM87aSfmgeSHvhVwCj_Dixxd1ecOR8

A release like this really makes me think. I went to my “Song idea starts” folder out of curiosity and there are 334 voice memos there of song ideas dating back to 2014 (I lost years worth of voice notes from before… thanks Apple). I think anyone who has any kind of creative itch can identify with this release… we all have our ideas folder of some kind.

I can’t imagine how brave (or zen or something?) you’d have to be to blast the equivalent of your “Song idea starts” folder out to the world. I’m also stunned he has a creative process where his equivalent of a “Song idea starts” folder is this coherent, high fidelity, and overall pleasant to listen to. Underscores why I put so much less stock in “genius” these days, having realized that while some people truly have a vastly higher natural peak ability at specific things, most of what we call genius is someone who has a process and is relentless. But it also feels like a “perfect practice makes perfect” type of thing - like him or not this dude has undeniably defined a lot of the aesthetic and trends of some circles of music over the last decade. Seeing the quality of everything below the tip of the iceberg is instructive. Setting up an environment conducive to that might be a lot of the battle. Case in point, these two “geniuses” are basically saying the same thing here https://youtu.be/5WMyjU5RweU?t=249 and here https://youtu.be/syIBWDnZqCw?t=322

It also is an interesting stamp on the streaming/post-album era. I guess he’s releasing an abridged version of this as a vinyl, but dumping ~9 hrs of music on the world as one release was never really practical before, similar to how albumless isolated singles have recently become more practical. Now a ~9 hour song dump is actually great given the incentives of the streaming platforms. A lot of these tracks are long enough to count as plays for streaming payouts. I don’t know what the monetization is like on lofi girl style youtube streams, but I have to imagine 9 hours worth of short songs played through traditional streaming platforms has to be better. Not that I think Mac cares about any of that type of stuff, but it’s interesting how natural the current landscape made releasing something like this.

So!YoON! rules

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIrZoer-yQ&feature=share

Image of So!YoON! - Smoke Sprite feat. RM of BTS at the top of the global iTunes weekly song chart

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-03-15/rm-the-leader-of-k-pop-band-bts-we-work-so-hard-in-korea-because-70-years-ago-there-was-nothing.html

The new Skrillex album is extremely impressive and has a lot of great moments, but Rumble is one of the coolest tracks I’ve ever heard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z25ZZ3DHds

First heard it in fred again’s boiler room set and I mean wow… https://youtu.be/c0-hvjV2A5Y?t=3362

The times square set looks like it was such a blast too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahe9baHOWIg

Edit: WAIT HE DROPPED A WHOLE SECOND ALBUM TODAY WTF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKWgLe-jQjc

Oliveira’s IEM Katowice StarCraft 2 win was incredible

https://twitter.com/ESLSC2/status/1624873404775165952